Chapter Text
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Y/N Hayden, daughter of Christopher Hayden, has a very complicated family history. Like many a family, it all started with a man and a woman, but atypically, another was involved in it all. See, while Christopher had a very public, seemingly sweet relationship with one Lorelai Gilmore, there was someone on the side named Penelope Dalton. She attended school with both Lorelai and Chris, and knew of their relationship, but teenagers aren’t typically the best at decision making sometimes.
The affair was kept hush, and it was never an official relationship, just hook ups and make outs in supply closets and behind the gymnasium etc. The straw that broke the camel's back was the result of two different nights, only a couple days apart that ended in both the young girls carrying Christopher’s offspring.
Everything blew up in the respective families’ faces. While the Gilmores offered Chris a future working with them, the Daltons were outraged by the scandal that would tarnish the family name. Chris didn’t take the offer, after talking it through with his family and thinking of what he truly wanted in his own future, but he made an agreement with the Daltons to move in with them to care for the baby. It isn’t clear whether the emotional connection he had for Lorelai pushed his decision to stay out of her life after he had ruined her future (in his eyes at least), or if there was a larger sum of hush money being offered by the Daltons that would allow him to travel far away from it all after the baby had been cared for after a couple of years, but he stayed with Penelope and her family nonetheless.
When the child was 6, Penelope and Christopher had moved into a townhouse in New York, and Penelope suddenly disappeared with no contact of when she would be back. It was pretty clear to Christopher that she wouldn’t ever be back. They never grew to properly love each other, and Chris never grew out of being bad with his money. Y/N’s mother got out of a spirally pit before there was no chance of return, leaving her unplanned child and the man who had ruined her future behind.
At age 11, Y/N was struggling severely with being bullied at school for her lack of nice clothes and having no way to go to birthday parties or sleepovers. Her dad was always drinking, and out of a job, so he couldn’t take her anywhere or give her any cash for her to go herself. He didn’t even consider how dangerous the city would be for a young girl like her.
15 years old and everything had fallen apart for Y/N. She started sneaking out and mixing in with the wrong crowd. Smoking cigarettes and stealing alcohol became a regular thing. A lot of the time she skipped school, despite being way too smart for the crappy little school she was enrolled in. Her dreams didn’t reach high like many people, she didn’t care about ivy league colleges or running a successful business. All Y/N wanted to do was make art, whether it be paintings, music or creative writing. She figured she didn’t need to go through an academic route of life for any of that. She had her dad’s old guitar, a notebook and some paint supplies that the school didn’t seem to care enough to keep regular track of to notice it was gone.
Christopher had fallen even deeper into the hole he had made for himself, rarely bothering to clean the house and switching jobs regularly. It was a shock anyone would still hire him. Fights between him and his daughter were very common, and a particular big blow out resulted in him dumping all of her things out the window. She needed to get out of that house. With scraps of change found between couch cushions, Christopher shoved the girl on a bus headed for Stars Hollow, where he knew his ex-lover Lorelai lived with his other daughter. Leaving a small message on the answering phone, his slurred speech rung out
‘I can’t deal with her anymore, she sucks all the money out of me and causes too much trouble. You can have her. I don’t care if she isn’t your child. You and Rory seem to be doing completely fine without me, what’s another kid, hey?’
When Y/N arrived in Stars Hollow, Lorelai had received the message already, and asked her good friend Luke to keep an eye out for her at the bus stop. The Inn was rammed the whole night and she couldn’t find a second to rush out and get her. She felt completely conflicted. She didn’t owe the young girl anything, she never asked about her, she wasn’t her child after all, but Lorelai knew how scary it could be to have no one to care for you. Lorelai got out of the bad family dynamic she was in, and as much as she liked being free from Emily and Richard, she had people who took her in. That’s how she fell in love with the Independence Inn, her current place of work. They cared for her and Rory, housing them in a little service shed on the green.
Lorelai knew she didn’t have enough money to take in another kid, especially one who was probably travelling with nothing at all, only the clothes on her back and her own wits. It crushed her heart, and she felt a murderous vengeance against Christopher for it.
Y/N hopped off the bus, feeling too numb to cry, instead in dire need of a cigarette, or something stronger. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her pack and her lighter, placing a cig to her lips. Before she could light it, a loud clear of someone’s throat made her jump out of her skin. Looking up, there stood a man in a flannel and a backwards blue baseball cap. He looked quite rugged, but with kind eyes, and his stance looked nervous.
“Are you Y/N Hayden by any chance?” He asked, putting his hands in his jean pockets.
“Who’s asking? No offence but you don’t look like my dad’s type,” Her deadpan tone was slightly mumbled, she lit her cigarette and started puffing, taking deep and purposeful drags. Luke politely chuckled, feeling very careful around the young girl, knowing what she has just gone through.
“No. Uh- I’m Luke. Luke Danes. I’m a friend of Lorelai’s and I run the diner here. Um… Lorelai asked me to wait here for you and keep you safe until she can get out of work,” His swaying showed just how uncomfortable this whole situation felt. Luke didn’t want to scare off the girl in this place that was utterly foreign to her, and he wasn’t ignorant to how this whole endeavour may seem a bit iffy to her.
“Well lucky you,” Her eyes rolled, finishing off her smoke and stomping it out with her ripped up converse. They stood in a painful silence before she spoke again, “So… Lead the way I guess?” This brought the man back to reality and he gestured his head, asking her to follow him. The walk back to the diner was very weird, Y/N took in the dark surroundings of the quaint town. She already missed New York, how it was never truly silent. It made it so that she never felt alone.
The door to the diner, aptly named ‘Luke’s’, let out a little jingle as the bell rang out, and a warm air hit Y/N’s red frozen face. It felt homely. Comforting. Luke walked around the counter, lifting the glass of the show plate of donuts.
“You want one? On the house,”
“Well that’s a relief, seeing as I have about, oh let’s see… No money,” She quipped, letting herself give a small smile, and she slid onto a bar stool, picking out a chocolate glazed donut. It smelled delicious and she hummed agreeably as she ate.
“Anything else? All the cookers are off but I can whip something up if you’d like,” The man was really trying everything he could to show the teen that this was a safe place, and that she was out of the rough life she had. She shook her head no, but he could tell she was just being polite. Luke stood, not having anything else to say, and put up his index finger, letting her know he would be right back. After a beat, he came back from upstairs to the diner with a beer in one hand and a soda in the other.
“Could I actually get some coffee please? Black?” A smile cracked at Luke’s mouth, as his mind crossed over to the Gilmore Girls obsession with caffeine.
“Of course,”
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Lorelai arrived at the diner, dressed in a lovely formal outfit, though her hair was messed up from the wind outside, and from a rough day's work. Her breath caught in her throat as the 15 year old turned to meet her eyes. Jeez, she looks so much like Christopher. Bringing herself back to the present, she let herself smile smally.
“Y/N. Are you okay? Sorry, stupid question I just- Do you need a hug?” Her rambling was light-hearted, and Y/N could already tell the woman didn’t have a bad bone in her body. She shook her head and looked down at the ground.
“I’m not exactly a touchy-feely person. All I need right now is to know what happens now. What happens to me?”
A long, hard conversation occurs, Luke listening quietly out of the way of the girls. Lorelai has tears in her eyes, her makeup smudged as she has to explain how there just isn’t enough room at her house for another kid, and that she wasn’t in a good financial place for now. She talks about how Rory would love her, and would be as happy to have her as she would, despite not knowing anything about her, and even offered up a space at the Inn temporarily. At this Luke pipes up, catching the attention of the two who had forgotten they weren’t alone as everything was laid out.
“What about here? I have a spare mattress for now and she can work here if she’d like to help out on the extra bills that will happen from having an extra person around. I mean, it isn’t the most crazy idea right? We both aren’t related to her, and she just needs a guardian. I mean, I don’t really know the first thing about raising a kid, but these days teens are independent enough to just need a place to sleep and eat right? Is that crazy, am I being stupid, God maybe I shouldn’t have-”
“I mean… I wouldn’t mind? I- I won’t be in your way right? If it is too much trouble I can figure something out… I could try and find my mother or something, I mean sure she is pretty much off the grid but-” Y/N couldn’t find the words. As much as her cold persona gave her the eire of not caring about anything in the world, she couldn’t help but be rendered shocked at the unadulterated kindness she was experiencing. “I mean, he’s not got some sort of drug ring upstairs right?” Her gaze switches to Lorelai, and the woman covers her mouth to stifle a laugh at the obvious joke. Her humour matches Lorelai’s and her daughter’s perfectly.
“I promise. You’re in safe hands with Luke. Though, he is a massive grump, and his idea of good food is like what a rabbit would eat,” Her elbow nudges the girl, and the two adults finally hear a soft laugh escape Y/N’s lips.
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2 years later, Y/N was sitting on her mattress that rested on a makeshift bed frame of crates that Luke assembled for her after a couple months of her boarding there, sneaking a morning cigarette as she read her tattered copy of The Scarlet Letter. A loud thud of the door to the apartment made her shoot up from her comfortable position. She dropped her tab onto the bed and cursed under her breath trying to stop a fire from happening on her sage green sheets. A loud huff escaped Luke’s mouth,
“Really Y/N? God! How many times do I have to tell you-”
“I believe this time makes it, about a million?” Eyebrows raise, and Y/N goes back to flipping through the pages of her book.
“And yet it still hasn’t stuck. You really need to at least crack a window in here, I- Anyway that’s not why I am here. I need to talk to you about something,” He waits for even a grunt of acknowledgement from the 17 year old, not receiving one. “Y/N this is serious… Okay,” He moves to pinch the book out of her hand and she shifts it just out of his grasp. “Oh, so you are still here, I was starting to think I was finally losing my marbles and I was talking to an apparition of you after you died after Taylor snapped and killed you for tagging his store for the 50th time,”
“What do you want, Luke? It is early, it’s Sunday I just want to read, so let’s get this over with. Are you finally kicking me out? Grown some balls to throw me on a bus to yet another small town for me to start another path of life, I heard that’s a popular trend,” Her legs cross, the baggy clothes that Luke had lent to her on the first visit still drown her frame, and even though she had her own clothes now, they were still the comfiest sleepwear known to man.
“Right, ignoring that, though it’s good you can joke about it, we have to do some rearranging around the apartment. You see, you know my sister Liz right? Yeah well she isn’t the best at, well anything really, but she is dumping her kid on me now. Yet another man has destroyed her brain and she can’t deal with herself and her kid at the same time,” He is pacing now, his voice with more and more annoyance laced within it.
“Wait, so she screwed up choosing another deadbeat guy and now you have to take in your nephew? How the hell is that a solution? Where would we even put him, oh God he better not go through my stuff. Liz definitely would be the type to raise a nosey little fiend,”
“Hey slow down! We can’t both be frantic, this isn’t helping, my heart might explode just… We’ll figure it out. I’m well versed in taking in scrappy kids off the street, as you know,” Luke sits in a dining room chair, head in his hands. “I’ve asked Caesar to man the diner, and we are going to move around some furniture today okay? I will pull out the old blow up mattress and we can throw it where there is room. And I think you make it very clear to people what you are capable of if they mess with you. Taylor gets the brunt of it, though it is easy to get a rise out of that man,” He gives an exhausted laugh.
Leaving a beat of quiet, Y/N asks, “Can I finish my book first?”
“Y/N!”
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